Daughter of the Revolution

"Every woman-cook," cried little Red Father Lenin in the first flush of revolution, "can rule the state." But instead the state soon ruled the women, liberating them from the "old household slavery" and giving them equal rights with men only so that they could also carry hods, puddle steel and unload barges. "The hardest-worked sex in the country and perhaps in the world," cried appalled Feminist Perle Mesta last year after seeing her sisters under the shawl in Russia. In 37 years no woman ever sat in the Soviet Politburo. Ana Pauker, onetime Rumanian Foreign Minister, is one of the few to reach top rank in the Communist world, and Pauker is now out of power and out of sight.

Last week a woman, 57-year-old Ludmila Jankovcova, became Deputy Premier of Czechoslovakia. Brisk, businesslike Ludmila, a competent economics teacher, began political life as a Socialist and a disciple of Czechoslovakia's honored Masaryk-Benes liberalism. She won two medals for her anti-Nazi underground activity in the war, but lost her husband (the Germans shot him). She became a changed woman. When the Communists destroyed Czech democracy in 1948, Ludmila stood by without a quiver, and even helped the Communists to swallow up her own party. Oldtime friends couldn't understand the switch, but Ludmila knew what she was doing: while they went into exile she went from Industry Minister to Minister of Food. She rose though production dropped, now has what is nominally the highest post held by any woman behind the Iron Curtain.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.